Downing Street has dismissed claims by a major Ukip donor that the government’s decision to extend the deadline for registering to vote is open to a legal challenge.
Following a statement by Arron Banks, the founder of Leave.EU, that he will seek a judicial review of legislation that allows voters to register until midnight on Thursday, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said the government’s plan was “legally watertight”.
David Cameron has promised to force through laws to extend the deadline to midnight on Thursday after the government’s registration website was overwhelmed by a surge in applications in the hours before the initial deadline of midnight on Tuesday.
Banks, who made his fortune in insurance, said his lawyers were examining the decision. The prime minister’s spokeswoman, however, dismissed the possibility of a legal challenge. “The government position is clear, is a legally watertight approach,” she said.
Questioned about whether the extension would favour the prime minister’s campaign to remain in the EU, she said: “This isn’t about how people may vote in the referendum. There is no way of knowing at registration how people intend to vote.
“This is about the government providing a service to enable people to exercise their democratic right. We had problems with that service we want to rectify and address it.”
In a statement, Banks had said the government’s extension was “unconstitutional at best”.
“We are therefore considering all available legal options with our legal team, with a view to potentially launching a judicial review now and after the outcome of the referendum on 23 June,” he said.
Vote Leave – the official Brexit campaign, which Banks does not fund – also criticised the decision to extend registration, but has not suggested it will sue the government.
The possible judicial review comes after 242,000 people applied to register to vote on Wednesday, a day after the initial deadline. At least as many are likely to apply on Thursday, after a record 525,000 applied on Tuesday.
It is thought the remain campaign stands most to gain from late registrations as most of those applying have been younger voters. Pollsters point out that young people are twice as likely to vote to remain in the EU, but under-25s are only half as likely to vote as over-65s.
The number who will actually be given the right to vote is likely to be significantly smaller than the number applying. Philip Cowley, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, pointed out that many people apply to register to vote who are either already registered, or who turn out to be ineligible.
For the next two days, I will mostly be tweeting this...
— Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) June 6, 2016
From The British General Election of 2015. pic.twitter.com/elfVUU3Sru
The pro-Brexit Tory Bernard Jenkin, who is chair of the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee, questioned why the government was failing to put in the same effort to find misregistered EU citizens who had been issued polling cards.
“The government is having to rewrite the rules to clear up a shambles of their own making,” he said. “Why are they not acting with the same vigour over weeding out misregistered EU nationals who have been sent polling cards and even postal ballots, but who are not eligible?”
He said if the referendum result were close, the decision could be challenged by a judicial review because of the deadline’s extension.
A remain campaign source said: “Arron Banks is free to waste his money in any way he sees fit, but it’s extraordinary that the leave campaigns are so angered by the prospect of people wanting to take part in the democratic process.”
Following emergency discussions with the Electoral Commission and opposition parties, the government plans to table a statutory instrument in parliament to amend the referendum conduct regulations, reducing the number of working days before the poll that the electoral lists must be published from five to three.
This will extend the registration deadline to the end of Thursday, while preserving a separate five-day period for appeals against entries on the register.
The website’s collapse emerged at about 10.15pm on Tuesday, when dozens of potential voters complained on Twitter that they could not access it.
